First up is a submission by [rusbus]. He had a Power Macintosh 6100/60 lying around – the first Macintosh with a PowerPC processor instead of the Motorola 68k – and loaded up our retro site. There are some weird quirks about the 6100, notably the AAUI Ethernet tranceiver connected to a 10BASE-T network.

Although some browsers are available for the 6100, notably iCab (it’s not great, but it also works on 68k machines), [rusbus] had to settle for Internet Explorer 3.01. He eventually got it working and has a picture to prove it.

The network adapter is a Retroswitch Flyer Internet Modem, and after finding some network-aware projects on the Retroswitch site such as an IRC and Telnet client, [azog] put together an extremely crude web browser. In BASIC. Old BASIC. We’re impressed.

With [azog]’s browser, the PET opens up a channel to a URL, reads the text coming in, and processes it. There’s only 1kb of video RAM and 32kb of system RAM, so small luxuries like scrolling are nearly impossible. An amazing piece of work, really.

Finally, [Bob] from Portugal sent in a neat Flickr gallery of a Schneider euro XT he found in his basement. It’s based on the IBM PC/XT running an Intel 8088 processor, but is enclosed in a ‘the keyboard is the computer’ form factor reminiscent of a C64 or TRS-80. He hasn’t gotten it on the Internet yet, but it’s still a cool piece of kit.

8 thoughts on “Hackaday retro roundup, this time with a PowerPC and a PET”

Schneider euro XT … is enclosed in a ‘the keyboard is the computer’ form factor

Look again, the computer is in a box separate from the keyboard, which looks to be a normal PC-XT type.

It’s one of those weird proprietary designs with two sideways expansion slots and a third upright one. There’s also a pair of odd, long “D” shaped connectors on the main board. Probably for some expansion that was rarely purchased or “reserved for future use”, which in the 80’s and early 90’s world of microcomputers and game consoles translated as “something that will never ever be used and if we have our way about it will never be documented”.

ok, finally got around to doing this. Tandy 1000 RSX (386sx25). It’s not uber ancient, but I used DOS and Arachne with a XIRCOM PE3-10BT Parallel port Ethernet adapter.

Internal Arachne screen shot:

Phone pic showing it all. (Yes, the Zip drive is not plugged in. Only one dedicated device on the parallel port at a time, but the DVD drive is plugged in via ribbon cable out the edge of the case in back.)